Corner: first macro virus to infect MS Project

25 Oct 1999Virus News

Cambridge, UK, October 26, 1999 - Kaspersky Lab Int., a fast-growing international anti-virus software development company, announces the discovery of the first macro virus Macro.Office.Corner able to infect MS Project files.

Corner is a multi-platform macro virus, which infects both MS Word (DOC) and MS Project (MPP) files. The ability to infect these two office applications is based on two functions inside of the virus' program code. One of them is automatically launched by MS Word and another by MS Project. These functions have different names in NORMAL.DOT template, and infected Word documents and Project files.

The method of virus replicating and spreading is common to all macro viruses created for MS Office applications: the virus takes control over active document (or project) and adds to it the virus code by using standard features of programming language VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

The virus carries no destructive payload and does not manifest itself in any other way.

The presence of the virus can be easily detected by the following comment string the virus inserts into infected documents:

I never realized the lengths I'd have to go
All the darkest corners of a sense
I didn't know
Just for one moment
hearing someone call
Looked beyond the day in hand
There's nothing there at all
Project98/Word97-2k Closer

"This macro virus provides no serious threat to computer users. I believe it is a kind of a "beta version" being spread to test its the efficiency and operability. However, I expect that in the nearest future we can see much more dangerous and destructive viruses similar to "Corner," - said Eugene Kaspersky, head of anti-virus department of Kaspersky Lab.

Detection and disinfection for Macro.Office.Corner virus have been included in emergency anti-virus database update of AntiViral Toolkit Pro (AVP).